This Is a Man’s World. This Is a Man’s World. But…

“You’ve gone completely boy crazy!” a former male lover scolded me last night. “Even I would make a better lesbian than you these days!”

Yah. Maybe.

But then, excuse me… ahem: What’s that part called? That part on a man’s lower torso, right at his hip joints? That V of a muscle cave that slides under the wide band of his underwear and down to his crotch, like an arrow commanding for a yield?

Don’t get me wrong: I adore women. Worship them. To me, there is no higher aesthetic — no better divinity to obey — than the curves of the female nude. And the way they are all soft, malleable to the touch, each one entering the space like a foaming wave, with its indistinguishable yet very detailed aromas: It makes you want to grab a pen or a brush, or an empty sheet of music. Suddenly, you wish for talents that just aren’t in your nature. You want to name things about a woman; but so busy is your mind soaking her up, so breathlessly humbled you are when she soaks you — you fear wasting a single minute on letting the mind depart in search of the right words and, god forbid (Shiva forbid!), lose her.

I watched a boy do that to me the other night. LA-LA was still in its San Franciscan mood — something he “did NOT sign-up for!” when he moved here six months ago — but as I shivered in the fog, hiding behind my frizzy hair and wrapping myself in the wide bottom of my gypsy skirt on a very San Franciscan street of my neighborhood, he couldn’t stop talking. Name that tune! Name that perfume! Name it!

“I’ve never seen a purple skirt like this before — this much purple!”

“What exactly is the color of that feather earring peeking through your hair?”

“That’s one unusual jacket!”

The darling boy-child was overwhelmed:

“You are…” — he kept saying, then lingering for the next big adjective he could remember from his undergrad.

But they don’t teach you the swagger of a man back in college: How to approach the unpredictable nature of a woman; how to size her up, then seize her with the exact words she’s been dying to hear since the beginning of her sex. When and how to touch her, how to hold her down without crushing or offending; without letting her slip down and in between your fingers. Where to tap. Which buttons to push. How to make her breathless or wild. How to unleash her humidities, to let her want to soak you. How to make her stay.

So, my dear boy-child struggled, visibly; working overtime to memorize and to decipher — to possibly impress — not even knowing that by the mere choosing of him that night, I already found him enough.

“You are…” — and he searched my face, my collar bone and the modest canyon between my breasts with those dark eyes he’d inherited from the other hemisphere, while unconsciously chewing on his lower lip. (I could make a meal of that thing!)

But while he lingered, I too found myself devouring his youth. The long-sleeved, slate-gray henley shirt with just the two top buttons undone clung to his shapely chest; and all I could do to keep myself from reaching across the table was to rewrap my shivering body in “this much purple” of a skirt. I could see the swelling of his pecs underneath, and I suspected that the tautness and the give of him was a testament to his youth and regiment. He was still in the midst of figuring out his own shape, his style — of coming into his own; but it would take a love affair with a woman — a woman with an experience for pushing his buttons — to learn about how this whole thing he’d inherited worked.

And he stood so tall! (I love that, about men. The way they can hold their ground, with all that body mass; some with a very laid-back grace, others — with an adorable apology for taking-up so much space.) When the boy-child walked me home that night, I measured myself up against him, and while still shivering, took the liberty of figuring out how I could fit into his side, for the first time ever. I looked for my nook — an intimate invasion along the body of a man I have not yet explored. This way? Or maybe, if I put my head here and catch my hand on his back pocket? Or, can I push my hip against his upper thigh and balance in his stride? While I adjusted and nudged; moved, shifted, and held onto, my hand slid along his lower stomach. I rested there, studied it:

Excuse me, but… ahem: What’s this part called? This part — this V — on a man’s lower torso, right at his hip joints? This groove leading to my life-long addiction?

But then again, this is the very first chapter of my life in which such open admiration of his kind has started. I’ve begun to admire men’s shapes, not just conquer them. I’ve started examining their skin, like some curious continents, with histories I no longer flippantly dismiss due to my own anger, or angst, or pride.

“Where is this scar from?”

“This beauty mark, above your lip: How long have you had it?”

Name that tune! Name that scent! Name it!

I find them funny, charming and intense; childlike — wonderful! — with having to give me what my worship of women cannot. Suddenly, in the company of men, I’ve begun to rest. Because for the very first time, they are — enough: Good enough and then some. They are enough, for me — yet so differently magnificent! — especially when they are sufficient, in their own skin.

But, still. Ahem… What IS that part called? That part, on a man’s lower torso, running parallel to his hip joints, but then detouring to heaven? What IS — that V? Name it.